Several days later...
Although Orsaga had long since departed, the demonic tide had only just come to an end. Outside the city walls, countless wounded soldiers were still gathering the fallen from the battlefield.
As the commander of the front line, Henry Muir was clutching the casualty report and the material loss ledger in his hands, his head pounding with frustration.
Just glancing at the numbers twice made his eyes ache—they were so staggering that he could hardly summon the will to look again.
Because each of those figures meant he'd have to engage in another grueling round of negotiations with the representatives from various kingdoms and races.
Dealing with a bunch of high-ranking nobles from completely different races and backgrounds—no matter how others saw it—was pure torment for him. Honestly, it was far more difficult than dueling a greater rank demon one-on-one.
Though the gods had forced the kingdoms and races into an uneasy alliance through sheer force of will, pooling their once-secret knowledge and sharing technology and heritage among themselves...
In some respects, the war-ravaged world of Myling was enjoying a kind of unprecedented prosperity. For the first time in history, the various races had let go of their deep-seated animosities and achieved a semblance of internal harmony.
But even so, the continuous drain of resources over the past century had taken a painful toll on all factions.
The hundreds of front lines that held back the demonic forces were like gaping wounds, bleeding out their strength with no end in sight.
Each new demonic tide meant another massive expenditure of troops and supplies—forcing everyone to tighten their belts and mutter bitterly about how hard life had become.
In that regard, Henry had to hand it to those nobles—they had somehow managed to maintain internal order during a seemingly endless war. That took a certain kind of genius.
Just as he was pondering how to extract more resources and reinforcements from them, the magical artifact he wore suddenly emitted a strange reaction, sending a flicker of unease through his heart.
Gripping it tightly, his vision changed—he could now see things that were normally invisible.
And that was how he noticed a massive flow of black mist drifting off into the distance.
The sources of the mist were chaotic—ordinary soil, corpses of various races, seemingly unconnected and random.
Though he didn't know what it was, his instincts told him it was something vile. An inexplicable disgust rose in his chest, and without thinking, he drew the weapon at his waist and slashed at it.
BOOM!
His blade passed right through the black mist and struck something else—completely ineffective.
It was as if the mist didn't even exist in this world.
His brows furrowed tightly.
Henry knew this was no small matter—likely the precursor to a major disaster. He immediately contacted the elite within the defense perimeter and reported his discovery.
And soon enough, his alert drew the attention it deserved. One after another, portals of light opened around him, and numerous powerful figures arrived by teleportation.
A thin, elderly human stepped out of a portal, frowning as he surveyed the surroundings. Though he couldn't see anything with the naked eye, he could clearly sense a deeply repulsive presence in the air.
After a moment's thought, he glanced at the other frowning experts around him, then extended a bony finger into the sky.
Suddenly, a beam of golden light shot from his fingertip into the sky. Hundreds of meters up, it exploded into a dazzling rain of golden particles that gently descended, blanketing the area like a divine canopy.
Only under the radiance of this holy light did everyone—soldiers and elites alike—finally see the black mist that had been there all along.
"Hiss..."
"What the hell is that..."
They stared in shock at the black mist pouring across the entire front line, and even beyond it, flowing ceaselessly toward the horizon. A deep sense of dread stirred among the demigods present—the fear of the unknown.
Suddenly, a strange aura burst forth from one of the demigods—a majestic and ancient energy that radiated power and nobility.
The moment it appeared, the black mist, which had previously ignored their presence, reacted violently. A portion of it surged toward the aura bearer like a black tidal wave.
"Zzzzz..."
The demigod's expression turned grim. He could only stand and watch as the two forces collided and consumed each other.
Aside from sensing that the power within him found the mist utterly repulsive, he knew nothing more.
Watching this unfold, an elven demigod suddenly felt a sense of déjà vu, as if he'd seen a similar scene described somewhere before. But the memory was buried deep, unimportant and ancient. For the moment, he couldn't recall it clearly.
Minutes passed, and just as everyone was debating whether to venture deeper into the "Polluted Zone" behind the lines to investigate—
BOOM!
A loud clap of thunder shook the sky.
In the blink of an eye, the clear blue sky turned overcast and oppressive.
"Ssshhhh..."
The rain came down as suddenly as the stormclouds appeared.
Catching a few droplets in his hand, the elf demigod stared at the blood-red liquid with wide eyes—at last, that long-buried memory resurfaced.
It was something he had seen as a child, in one of the mythological scrolls kept within his clan.
And for an elf, a long-lived race that viewed myths as little more than bedtime stories, anything classified as myth had to be unimaginably ancient.
"BOOM... BOOM..."
He looked up to see thousands of crimson lightning bolts tearing through the clouds, turning the sky into a sea of blood-red flashes.
After a moment of hesitation, the elf turned to the elderly man who had summoned the golden light and asked, "Have you ever heard of the Ancient Evil?"
"Hmm?"
The old man looked puzzled.
That name was distant and almost irrelevant to him—it belonged to myths said to date back hundreds of thousands of years.
"Hmm!"
But the moment he considered the current circumstances, his expression changed.
His eyes widened in disbelief as he looked up at the blood-drenched sky.
Recalling the forbidden records hidden deep within the elven archives, his face darkened.
"You mean to say… one of the Ancient Evils is about to awaken near here?"
The elf gazed at the storm of blood-red lightning above them, and with some hesitation replied, "It's a possibility..."
Gritting his teeth, the old man sighed heavily. "...That's some truly terrible news..."
"I couldn't agree more," said the elf with a solemn nod.
---
The so-called Ancient Evils were monstrous entities born in the earliest days of the world—formed from the densest concentrations of negative energy.
Compared to them, even the so-called evil gods—who everyone loved to hate—were polite and reasonable by contrast.
They were mad. Powerful. Bloodthirsty.
And because they were amalgamations of the world's own negative forces, they represented entire aspects of its dark laws. There was no way to truly kill them—not even by destroying every trace of their bodies or souls. They were as indestructible as they were terrifying.
Against such foes, even the gods could barely hold their ground—only a few of the highest-ranked Gods could engage one in direct battle.
Countless lives were lost to them. It wasn't until the end of the ancient era that the gods, unable to tolerate their destruction any longer, united with the mortal races and paid a terrible price to banish them to other worlds—forever sealing them away.
That war had been as devastating as the Abyssal Invasion itself.
Legend says it wiped out half of the world's land and seas, cutting the total number of living beings across the globe in half.
So the moment there was even a sign that one of them might be returning...
The elderly man felt a cold sweat break across his back.
All he wanted now was to get the hell out.
Because those things were simply beyond their pay grade. Only a true Supreme God could even think of going toe-to-toe with an Ancient Evil.
As for them? If they ran into one, they'd die without even the chance to scream.
No resistance. No survival. Just instant annihilation.
__
T/N:
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